tips

Grading student papers and giving feedback: it’s the bane of the writing teacher’s life, but it tends to occupy a lot of our time. Particularly now, as the school year comes to an end and our inboxes fill up with piles of final papers.

It’s such a source of consternation and frustration that there are a number of professional books out there on how to make the process faster, easier, and less painless. In one of these books, aptly titled Papers, Papers, Papers: An English Teacher’s Survival Guide, legendary English teacher Carol Jago underscores the importance of our work and concludes, “We owe it to our students not to let the paper load defeat us.”

Given the research on the importance of feedback on students’ writing (Hattie & Timperley, 2007–see link), we must continue to engage with students’ papers. So how do we stay strong and avoid defeat, as Jago argues we must? There’s a way to increase the valuable feedback students receive without adding to our own workloads. The answer lies in peer response. Continue reading →

Counting off. Drawing cards. Lining up by birthday. There are many ways to get students (or anyone) into groups, some more creative or fair than others. Here’s another that I’m particularly fond of. I learned about “sole mates” at a recent AVID training in Tustin, CA. For those who are unfamiliar, here’s how it goes. Continue reading →